Philosophical Imagination and the Evolution of Modern Philosophy

Would you like to get a conceptual overview of the history of philosophy in an easy-to-read-book that is hard to set down? James Danaher has just written that book.

Throughout history, the philosophical imagination has created our evolving perspectives on the world that shape our thought. Modern materialism, rationalism, empiricism, phenomenalism, historicism, existentialism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and feminism are schools of thought have their origin in the imagination, however we all too often believe these perspectives give us access to truth itself, rather than being ways to make sense of our experience. Truth as something to know will always be relative to the imagination and the perspectives it creates.

However, another notion of truth as something to be has emerged over the history of philosophical thought from Socrates to the present that is not relative to the changing perspectives of truth as something to know. This book distills the evolution of these concepts into an easily readable history of philosophy.

This is the book I have been waiting for. Danaher straightens out the maze in a readable, compact, and comprehensive journey of twenty-five centuries of philosophical perspective from Heraclitus and Aristotle to Kuhn and Lyotard. Danaher has given us, as he says, “a history of the way the philosophical imagination has caused human consciousness to evolve in order to make sense of new data as it has appeared over our history.”

This is a small book

filled with big understanding and insight for all who would like to find out why they look at life the way they do and where we are heading as we continue to evolve.—Paul Smith, author of Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve

James Danaher expands our understanding of the meaning of truth, reconnecting it to beauty and goodness. His exploration of truth’s philosophical evolution helps us appreciate how truth is being itself. This insightful book takes high philosophical concepts and makes them interesting and accessible for the general reader.— Steve McIntosh, author of The Presence of the Infinite, and president of The Institute for Cultural Evolution

“For beginners, it will provide a useful overview of many—possibly even most—of the high points of Western philosophy. For philosophy graduate s

tudents and professors, it will provide a lot to think about and (often) disagree with. For theologians, it may provoke thought and comment about what is truly good or valuable in religion and theology…. But in its short 172 pages the book covers an enormous ground…. It is also remarkably well and clearly written, with a minimum of philosophical jargon, so almost everyone should be able to read it without straining to understand what the writer is trying to say. I recommend it without hesitation.” —Excerpt from International Journal on World Peace, September 2017, by Lloyd Eby, Lecturer in Philosophy at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

“James Danaher has written a clear, succinct, and compulsively readable history of the philosophical imagination and the evolution of the modern mind. Even more important, he has questioned the usual truth-claims of philosophy and suggested that there is another way to truth that is both higher and wiser. Not to be missed.”—Maggie Ross, author of Silence: A User’s Guide.